


made for remembering

by picturecat



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 3490, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 3490 Fest, Dancing, Earth-3490, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 18:57:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19797013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picturecat/pseuds/picturecat
Summary: Captain America wants to ask his best friend, Natasha Stark, for a dance. Steve Rogers just has to get up his nerve.





	made for remembering

No one could ever say Tasha Stark wasn't bold. In dress, in philosophy, in person. She was colorful, and bold, and bright, and asking her to dance was impossible. 

Steve grabbed an hor d'oeuvre and made his way through the crowd in a gentle circle, trying to look like he wasn't better suited for holding up a wall somewhere.  
Pepper Potts caught his eye from across the room, quirking an eyebrow at him. Steve felt his shoulders hunch in response as he smiled sheepishly, and Pepper gave the ceiling an utterly despairing sort of look. Then she turned back to him, jerked her head at Tasha, pointed at the dance floor, and flapped her hand at him in a shooing motion. 

Steve’s ears burned. Obediently, he turned toward where Tasha was holding court, surrounded by an enraptured audience. Her dress was simple: stark white, so that her skin seemed to glow and the few dark tendrils of hair artfully loose from her updo looked dark and lush in contrast. The sleeves were long and off-shoulder, baring tantalizing stretches of smooth tanned skin, and when she turned a little, the low-cut back exposed the toned expanse of her shoulders and lower back. 

Steve gulped. 

A woman talking to Tasha spotted him and inclined her head his way, saying something smirkingly. Tasha turned to look at him, her face lighting up. 

“Steve,” she said. He couldn't hear her, but he recognized the shape of his name in her mouth. He cut through the crowd to her side. 

“Tasha, hi,” he said, feeling unaccountably shy. Well, not entirely unaccountably-- he rather suspected the avid gleams in the eyes of Tasha’s friends had something to do with it. 

“Hey, stranger,” she replied, smiling. Her lips were very red, and her eyeshadow had been done in shimmery orange and gold like a sunset on her skin. It made the blue of her eyes seem Caribbean clear. “I've hardly seen you all night.” She reached out and grabbed his forearm, squeezing just a little. 

“I— I've been busy. It's. You know. Crowded.” Steve managed, and valiantly resisted the urge to strangle himself. A young woman in periwinkle giggled. 

Tasha turned him toward the group and introduced him to a flurry of names, most of them preceded with “Dr”s and followed by stunning lists of accomplishments. Steve nodded and smiled politely, and grappled all the while with a mental image of a blonde gorilla in a tuxedo. 

A dark-skinned woman with a doctorate in biochemistry, a nonprofit that provided free afterschool for at-risk youth, and a low-cut yellow dress kissed Tasha on both cheeks and bid her farewell, shooting Steve a little wink as she did so and taking most of the gaggle of women with her. 

“Thank you for coming with me,” Tasha said, snagging his arm and leading him towards the bar. “I know it's very boring, but it does help me to have you here.”

‘Boring’ was not how Steve would have described the evening so far. ‘Emotionally agonizing.’ ‘Wracked with indecision,’ maybe. 

Boring, no. 

“It's no trouble,” Steve replied. “I'm happy to help.” 

Oh, god. He was going to chicken out again. He was going to miss his chance and spend the night counting specks of dust in the mansion’s library and probably the rest of his life watching Natasha date people who were terrible for her and also _not him._

Tasha asked him something. 

“What?” he started. 

“Never mind,” she said quickly. “Can I get a peach ginger ale, please?” she asked the bartender. “Hey, I'm gonna go talk to Pepper for a bit. You wanna Coke or something, Mack the Knife here’ll hook you up.” She jerked her head at the bartender, whose name tag read “Mack” in thick black letters. 

Hey, a reference Steve understood. 

She swooped away with a thin little smile and a glass of amber soda, beelining for Pepper across the room. Steve watched her go, trying to keep his face from looking like that of a man giving into the abyss of despair. 

He was a coward. Why was it easier for him to jump off a skyscraper than it was to ask his best friend a simple question?

“Sprite, please,” he said to Mack the Knife, who had probably never stabbed anyone at all, much less enough people to resemble the subject of a jazz hit from the 1950’s. 

He was watching the ice melt in his glass, having just finished nodding and smiling his way through a conversation with the mayor’s son, when Pepper found him again. She put her hand on his arm, and her manicure dug into his suit jacket, a warning in nude pink. 

“Steve,” she said, her voice as smooth as an ice rink, and holding just the same hint of chill. “How many times have we had this conversation?” She began leading him away from the bar, and he hurriedly set his glass on a tray. 

“Several?” he guessed. “Is this the ‘sulking in a corner’ conversation or…”

She gave him a flat look. “It's the Tasha conversation. The one where I beg you to put me out of my misery and ask her to dance. Or dinner. Or just to go ahead and marry you; frankly, I don't care what you two do together as long as it gets her to stop asking me if I think you think she thinks you're wonderful.” 

She said all this with the arch tone of someone who was recalling something exactly, and yet, Steve could only think of the time when he was eleven, and Frank the butcher’s son swore up and down that Vera Martin thought he was cute. 

She hadn't, but Frank had sure gotten a kick out of watching her politely but awkwardly turn down the three daisies Steve had gotten for her. 

Steve bit back the urge to ask Pepper if she was sure again. He definitely didn't think Pepper was the sort to play mean tricks like that. “I just don't want to mess up what we have,” he said instead, hearing the weakness of the excuse in his voice. “I don't know what I would do if things went wrong and we couldn't be friends anymore, and… things tend to go wrong, for me.” 

“And I'm trying to be respectful of that, Steve, I really am,” Pepper said wearily. “I don't like to meddle in people’s personal lives— it's condescending and ridiculous. But you two are both crazy about each other, and both big scaredy cats when it comes to initiating a romance, apparently.”

“Scaredy cats who've had their tails stepped on one too many times,” Steve added a little ruefully. 

Pepper smacked him lightly, laughing. “Come on, Captain. If you can't work up the guts to dance with her, you can at least dance with me and make her jealous enough to spit.”

“I don't want to make her jealous,” Steve said without thinking, staring out over the crowd to where Tasha was chatting with a wild-haired elderly man. “I want to make her happy.”

Pepper blinked at him. “I may swoon,” she said. “That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard. Forget the dance— after that, I need a drink. And Steve?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and gave a pointed look at Tasha’s corner of the room. “Please go talk to her.”

Steve watched her slice through the crowd, all elegance and towering heels. Then he looked toward Tasha. She was gesticulating wildly as she spoke now, irritably brushing at the smoky dark curls some exorbitant stylist had deliberately left in her line of sight, and he felt a smile take over his lips. His heart beat crookedly in his chest. 

He inhaled deeply, setting his shoulders. One dance. He could ask for this. 

One dance.

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from tumblr in the spirit of 3490 Fest.  
> Title from the song "Mam'selle" by Dick Haymes. Have a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxNGEUXzeQc


End file.
